


Convergence

by network



Series: Destiny Shorts [20]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: A Whole Mess, Angst, Body Horror, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Self Harm, Mutism, Post-Oryx, Post-Taken King, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Scars, Sleep Paralysis, This is all just angst I'm so sorry, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-17 06:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19948177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/network/pseuds/network
Summary: Taevas suffers the after effects of her fight with Oryx, and Cayde tries to help / hurt-comfort, more hurt though





	Convergence

“Hey kid, you holding up ok?”

It’s the first thing she hears and actually processes since returning to the Tower. There’s been words, sure – questions since she’d walked mutely into the Vanguard Hall, questions Unelema has done his best to answer, the report El had to give on his own because her brain refuses to form words and her brain can’t process what’s goin-

There’s something else. A smell, something which one part of her mind is clawing towards in _safe, familiar, home-_ but that she instinctively shuts down, hides away from. It’s the palpable taste of cold, the burn in the back of her throat, the wind picking up the torn edge of her cloak, of course it is - she knows Cayde is the one who’d guided her out of the Hall and out to one of the Hunter spots up on the roof. She can recognize his voice now that she knows he’s there, can pick out the presence hesitating near her from the noise – _static_ \- that seems to be filling every _crevice, crack, gap-_ of her head.

_(The wind out here once felt safe. Now every breeze is a mountain-levelling path of destruction.)_

Surprisingly, some part of her breaks free of the invisible vice keeping her frozen, just managing a shaky, half-aborted, head-shake, before freezing up again.

“Well, I- I don’t know what answer I was expecting.” She doesn’t respond, though part of her desperately wants to. “I’m sorry kiddo, I shouldn’t have let you go on your own – I know you insisted, but -.”

She shakes her head again, in that tiny jerky motion. Her lips open, but the words of reassurance she tries to say get lodged in her throat. She tries to force them, to tell him its not his fault, that she would’ve gone to face Oryx alone no matter how much he insisted, that at least in this way it’s only her that had to face those horrors. This way only she has to know what she saw – only one person has a brain full of static and fingers that still shake with _adrenaline, fear - terror._ Only she sees pure black lines crawl up her arms, only she sees the Things crawling beneath her skin that she’s too afraid to touch for fear that they might be real, only she sees flashes of _death, destruction, **power** -_

Instead all she can manage is a half gagged _“No.”_ before she doubles over, desperately trying to cough - _retch_ , out the thing lodged in her throat, stuck there, but nothing budges. Flecks of blood speckle the ground below her and she finds herself not knowing if they’re really there or not. 

_(She’s seen a lot of blood. Now she’s convinced none of it was real.)_

Over the ringing in her ears and the smell of blood that she can somehow _hear_ , she hardly processes Cayde’s words, only picking out _“ ----- home. -ah, transmatt, I don’t -- she can make it ----”_

The sickly feel of a transmatt hardly registers in her brain.

\--

She wakes to darkness.

It takes her eyes a few moments to adjust to the tone, in which time she instinctively reaches up to rub the sleep-dust out of her eyes.

She realises she can’t move.

From there it takes only a moment for panic to set in, for in the lightening room the outline of Him – _Oryx_ – becomes visible, somehow both shrunken enough to fit in the enclosed space and taller than His usual form, godly eyes staring down at her in a discernible mix of _disgust, mocking, **pride**_.

_Don’t be proud of me –_ she screams at Him wordlessly – **_I’M NOT YOURS_**

The disgusting Hive pseudo-laugh she gets in return only terrifies her more, animalistic instinct kicking in as she desperately tries to move – to wake up, if she can, if this isn’t real, if _He_ is really dead and the hell she went through wasn’t truly for naught. He raises His hands and she can feel tendrils of pure _darkness_ crawl up her arms, chasing away the starlight under her skin and chaining her in place somehow more than she already was, and all she can feel is _fear, pure fear, unadulterated fear, there’s no end to it, this never ends, she’ll never wake up, this is all-_

She screams.

\--

The next time she wakes, the room is pleasantly free of darkness.

She’s in her bedroom, the one she hasn’t properly slept in in months (though she gets the feeling that all three Vanguards will ground her here for the next year now), light filtering in through the open windows and air warm from sunlight. She squints against it, like she hasn’t seen anything but darkness all her life, until she’s startled by a little form speeding into her chest.

“Don’t ever do that again.” Unelema says against her chest, voice raw and cracked, somehow. “You were out for two weeks. I couldn’t feel you through our Link.”

( _That’s good, she thinks – she doesn’t want him to know what she was experiencing.)_

“It was like you were dead – proper dead.”

_(Reassurances die on her tongue – not only do the words not form, but even she’s not sure that she’s not dead)_

She’s saved from having to respond when Cayde enters the room, seemingly coming in to check on her when he notices that she’s awake. He approaches carefully, cautiously, not that she can blame him, for how she was the last time she was conscious, hands up in the manner in which one would calm a raging animal.

“She’s fine, Cayde.” El says, a little exasperated. “We both know she won’t hurt you.”

_(She might, and that scares her)_

They talk like she’s not there, and that’s fine because maybe she’s not. The person she was before certainly isn’t here anymore. Taevas – whoever that was, whoever she was pretending to be – is gone, and she’s scared of what’s left.

Cayde brings her food, and she does her best to eat it, knowing that it will reassure him. Nobody needs to know that she throws it all up later, unable to properly eat around the darkness lodging up her throat.

\--

She’s not okay.

It’s readily apparent to anyone who cares enough to look, though she does her best to pretend. Long sleeves cover the scars and scabs from where she scratches the darkness under her skin away. El tells people her vocal cords are damaged so she can pretend that she isn’t traumatised. She smiles and accepts thanks and honours and compliments, shakes hands, stands quietly at social events she’s suddenly invited to.

_(It’s a good mask, she thinks.)_

Nobody else has to know what she sees, what she hears, what she _thinks._ Nobody else knows of the whispers in her brain and the shadows in her skin and the nightly visits from Oryx that remind her that she’ll never be free. She hides it from them to protect them, hell she even pretends to El that she’s fine, as much as she can hide from a being linked to her mind.

She might scream at night, she might never trust the shadows, she might never be free.

But she’s fine.


End file.
